Pompeii, Vesuvius and Napoli

The national park of the volcano Vesuvius, and the remains of two Roman towns it destroyed are located on the coast of the Bay of Naples in Campania, between Napoli and Sorrento. We based ourselves in Napoli (Naples) and spent a few days exploring the area and its geological, historical and gastronomic sights.

Pompeii

Pompeii was famously destroyed by the Plinian eruption of the stratovolcano Vesuvius on August 24-25th AD 79. However, it was to a much more tranquil setting when we visited on August 25th some 1943 years later.

The story of Pompeii is one which captures the imagination, and after studying the event in year three (during our Covid homeschool) Rafe’s interest had been piqued and suggested it as somewhere he would like to visit on the trip. Vesuvius is regarded to be the most dangerous volcano in Europe, and is overdue for another catastrophic eruption, which seems not to bother the everyday existence of the 3.5 million inhabitants of the bay of Naples, 600,000 of them living directly in the red ‘blast zone’ surrounding the volcano.

Pompeii is huge. 12,000 people are thought to have lived in the town before its destruction and it covers an area of 66 hectares. We rented audio guides (tip- take your own headphones for kids as ours struggled to fit the massive earpieces in their tiny ears before giving up on the guide in a strop) and wandered around learning about what archaeologists had pieced together about the town by way of the surviving  frescos and mosaics, giving houses names such as the Villa of the Mysteries- with some of the most famous frescoes in the Roman Empire, the House of the Faun – named after a statue of a faun found outside, the House of the Wounded Bear – named after a mosaic showing a wounded bear and the House with the Garden, which has a garden. And so on. From a vantage point which we stumbled across accidentally on the way to the loos, we could start to get a feel for the size and set up of the town. Highlights were the exceptionally well preserved grand theatre and imagining ourselves as gladiators in the amphitheatre.

After learning about the remarkable method Giuseppe Fiorelli developed in 1863 to create plaster casts of the human remains in Pompeii, Dessa was keen to ‘see the bodies’. However I don’t think any of us were prepared for how ghostly and poignant the petrified remains would be. In total, the remains of over a thousand victims of the volcano have been found in Pompeii, although some were destroyed as a result of bombing in WWII, and some have been moved to the national archaeological museum in Napoli away from the ravages of the Campanian climate. Some remain in situ, such as 13 casts preserved in the fugitives garden, including a number of children. The antiquarian, the on site museum in Pompeii has recently reopened after 40 years describing Pompeii’s history and untimely fate and showcases some of the casts of humans and animals as well as frescos and other treasures found at the site. We spent around five hours in Pompeii, which was much too long for some (it was hot) but we certainly didn’t see all there was to see.

Up Vesuvius!

It would be impossible to visit Pompeii without considering the villain in the piece, Mount Vesuvius itself. Covid has changed the world in many ways recently, not least with the advent of the Timed Entry Ticket to visit just about anywhere. So, we duly booked our Vesuvius Grand Cono (Great Crater) entry tickets and bus tickets (more on the bus tickets below) a day in advance and woke up to find the volcano shrouded in atmospheric cloud. A blessing and a curse, this meant we couldn’t see the panoramic views of the Bay of Naples and Capri from the top, but did mean our hour and a half hike was pleasantly cool amongst some of the only cloud we’d seen in months, and the clouds wisping up the mountain and into the crater made for quite an eerie scene.

Plinian eruptions are the most explosive type in the volcanic eruption classification, named after Pliny the younger who was handily was taking staying in Misenum, 12 miles away and gave a detailed description of the eruption in his letters to Cornelius Tacitus. His uncle, Pliny the Elder was killed by the eruption while attempting to rescue residents in his capacity of naval chief.

Herculaneum the victor

Now, here’s a tip. If you’re short on time for Roman tourism in Campania, you can skip Pompeii all together, take the train to Ercolano, quickly visit the volcano and then head off to the much smaller, but exceptionally well preserved Herculaneum. Sure, Pompeii is big and you won’t see the temples and theatres and forum, but compact Herculaneum captivated our kids much more than busy, sprawling Pompeii. The locations of the two towns meant they suffered quite different fates from the volcanic eruption. In Pompeii, the first day of the eruption sent showers of rocks and pumice over the town, resulting in a huge amount of damage before the deadly ash clouds engulfed the city in ten metres of ash. Herculaneum, however, much closer to the volcano avoided the initial stage of the eruption due to the wind direction, but took the full force of the later pyroclastic flows, torrents of gas and ash which flooded down the mountain side, encapsulating the town almost instantaneously in 25 metres of ash and leaving complete houses with roofs preserved beneath. Many people were able to escape before the more destructive second phase of the eruption, although the town’s old dock area can be seen complete with unlucky skeletons who were still waiting for a boat across the bay. The kids found they could much more easily imagine themselves as townspeople in the streets of Herculaneum, and especially enjoyed imagining what street food they would serve at the thermopolium. The tiny museum on site with some wonderful pieces of Roman glass, jewellery and sculptures from the town was also fascinating. Another plus was there were far fewer other visitors and none of the huge tour groups which made Pompeii feel oppressively busy at times.

Napoli!

We also managed to spend a little time looking about Napoli. An evening walk along the via Partenope harbour side promenade was fun, and the kids spent time spotting crabs and climbing on the rocks by Castle Ovo.

We also very much enjoyed the nearby Anton Dohrn Aquarium located in the Villa Comunale park. It’s a bijou little aquarium, the oldest in Italy, founded in 1874 and has recently reopened after renovation. The main part focusses on the aquatic life found in the Bay of Naples at different water depths- we particularly like the Roman moray eel farming display, and a few tropical tanks thrown in for good measure. We stopped for gelato afterwards at Gelateria Pitera opposite the park. (Jim recommends the lemon, Dessa thought the strawberry was a bit odd).

And of course no visit to Napoli would be complete without pizza. We went to the local Pizzeria Friggatoria and it was great and friendly with Pizzas as large as expected. We were also pleased to find it was located on Carbonara Street. The door to door melon sales caused quite a stir in the centro storico street where our bnb was located

How we did it

We have had a few questions on logistics of visiting some of these places. So for those interested here’s some non-definitive notes.

We stayed in an AirBnB in the residential backstreets of the centro storico in Napoli. It’s an area that is handy for the main stations of Napoli and it worked well for us. There are plenty of small food places and mini marts around for supplies. We did look at staying in Sorrento which would have been handy for the beach but ruinous for the wallet. It’s a similar distance visit the volcano and Roman towns from either Napoli or towns along the Sorrentine Peninsula, all accessed using the same Circumvesuviana trainline.

Basing ourselves in Napoli meant several options for getting to Vesuvius and Pompeii. with regular buses and tours. We chose to take the train on the Circumvesuviana line and it worked very well. As ever, Mark @ Seat61 has all the details covered perfectly. From where we were staying in the Centro Storico, both Naples stations were an equidistant walk. We chose to board the train from the smaller Napoli Porta Nolana, the terminus for these little privately run trains. This meant we could buy our tickets in a slightly calmer environment and board at our leisure as the train waited to leave, with the added bonus of bagging seats before the hoards got on at the main Napoli Garibaldi.

For Vesuvius and Herculaneum we took the train to Ercolano which takes 20 minutes. There is then a bus from Ercolano station to fairly near the top of Vesusvius. We had bought our bus tickets online (from tiquets.com– €10 per adult) safe in the knowledge we could then just saunter onto the bus to the volcano from the station. Not so! You still need to swap your digital ticket for a paper voucher at the ticket point just outside Ercolano station – even though the digital ticket says you don’t need to print it. Which was annoying. Once assigned a bus, there is a matching return bus around 2 hours later. This was plenty of time for us (even at Odessa’s pace) to cheerily climb the mountain and catch the return. You need to book tickets for the Vesuvius entry online in advance (no sales at the door, and patchy mobile coverage at the top!). Herculaneum we had no problems walking up and purchasing our tickets at the door for entry.

For Pompeii, we took the same train to Pompeii scavi, which takes around 35 minutes and brings you very close to the Porto Marina entrance. We booked Pompeii entry tickets online which meant we didn’t need to queue on arrival.